[OS X TeX] TL2008 destroys my geometry

[Alain Schremmer]

On Jan 4, 2009, at 12:36 PM, Herbert Schulz wrote:

>
> On Jan 4, 2009, at 11:01 AM, Alain Schremmer wrote:
>
>> On Jan 4, 2009, at 11:37 AM, Peter Dyballa wrote:
>>
>>> you must not dictate how an user typesets his or her documents.  
>>> Particularly foul is to load an input encoding clandestine. This  
>>> will print an u from an input x (or something like that). The  
>>> decision on encodings used belongs to the user, not the package  
>>> author
>>
>> This anarchist agrees. But, the freedom must be real, that is the  
>> decision on encodings must be CLEARLY posed to the user who must  
>> understand it. I for one have no idea what the whole thing is.
>>
>> Best regards
>> --schremmer
>
>
> Howdy,
>
> I assume you are talking about the whole encoding mess.

Yes, but I didn't want to know!!!!
>
> The problem is that once you get past the basic 128 character ASCII  
> set there have been multiple, INCOMPATIBLE ways of representing  
> (encoding) the extended character set; e.g., Mac Roman, Latin 1,  
> UTF-8. The last encoding is the first that seems to have universal  
> acceptance. TeX got around this problem by only using ASCII  
> characters and macros to construct accented character, etc.

First time I understand anything about the mess.

> In LaTeX the inputenc package allows for a translation from the  
> stored encoding to something LaTeX can understand.

Ah!

> There are actually three things that must cooperate. The Editor  
> must save and read the source file in a known encoding so that it  
> can display the extended character set correctly. In TeXShop this  
> is done with a line such as
>
> %%!TEX encoding = UTF-8 Unicode
>
> near the top of the file before saving the file (or changing the  
> default encoding to UTF-8 in TeXShop->Preferences). The second is  
> to tell LaTeX how to interpret the extended character set (i.e.,  
> understand the a certain character number means é) using a line like
>
> \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
>
> for UTF-8 encoding. Finally the font you are using must have that  
> character in a certain location in the font file. To do this a line  
> like
>
> \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
>
> tells LaTeX how to map the particular input code to an actual glyph  
> to be printed with ink onto the paper. Oh, one more thing, the font  
> itself must have the character or a blank glyph will be printed;  
> e.g., the Latin Modern fonts, an extended version of Computer  
> Modern, does have the character while Computer Modern doesn't.
>
> Hope that I've got that right and it's comprehensible.

This is the FIRST TIME I have put up with an explanation of the mess  
and I am glad I did.

BUT:

I think that you should now put that explanation, perhaps slightly  
edited, somewhere on the wiki in such a way that it would be one of  
the first things a potential customer would encounter.

And I remain unconvinced, should i suddenly decide to write in  
French, that I would know what to do. Still, it is a worthwhile start.

Appreciative regards
--schremmer